That's interesting. Somehow I never heard the background story before, or maybe only small snippets of the given. Linus has got to be the GOAT developer...rocking the software world to its core like none other, not once but twice. Unreal.
Why would Java not be an ideal fit for containerization (why would any runtime not be)? Also, given you don't have to pack everything into one VM (can have many nodes, VMs, load balanced, whatever)...what makes Java particularly bad for horizontal scaling?
This. I was never a huge baseball fan, but my sons got into it, and observing beyond the surface it is really impressive how many split-second intelligent decisions you have to make in baseball, with (again) quick ad hoc coordination.
And what does that mean? Using GPA or standardized test scores as the _only_ criteria? If I have 10 people in the 99th percentile of test scores but I only have 5 seats, do I _really_ think the upper 5 who beat the lower 5 by a handful of points are the "best" fit, or are there other factors that might influence my decision?
To me, these is like taking NFL players only based on their raw sprint and lift stats...yah, it's important...but it's in no way a firm indicator of "best".
There is truth to this. As a rural Illinois boy I traveled to Chicago to intern and it just wasn't my cup of tea...plain and simple. People are different, culture is different. In my town in the "sticks" we have brown people and immigrants--plenty (will come as big shock to some who think we're all just inbred corn eaters out here). That is not the difference...to get that mandatatory political correctness dance out of the way. Rather it is simply the way people relate to each other, attitudes, community or what passes for it.
I know we're just having fun here...but if we really could standardize on one language (or mostly one language) the development benefits would be insane.
Come on...bundle your JRE. I don't know why anyone wouldn't in the age of terabyte hard drives and ubiquitous "small" apps with sizes that make a bundled JRE with all the trimmings look lightweight.
>I will say, though, that I for one don't want to be caught on the side of the discussion where I don't learn enough about what is possible with AI/ML, and then get left behind.
I understand that feeling. On the other hand, aren't there a lot of trains you can miss? Do you try to guess which trains are the critical ones (and can you, really?) or do you try to keep up with all of them?
AI/machine learning, quantum, block chain...the list goes on. It seems like the best you can do is not be blindingly ignorant of any of the technologies and their potential...I think few people can really "keep up" unless they have the luck (or misfortune?) to have a job like "Quantum Crypto AI Researcher".
It's been a while since I lurked Haskell forums/haunts (was into it way back when), but at that time Lens was a big deal...if that's not a highfalutin library made for the most entrenched monad geeks (and for the purpose of making setters and getters, no less), I don't know what is. I guess I'm really shocked to hear that Haskell is all pragmatic and simple now with slim abstractions...but I'd love to be corrected.
One thing I would say is just talk through problems with candidates as simple as that sounds. Try to grok how they think through software problems. Nothing mind-blowing there, but what I'm saying is how someone codes fizz-buzz tells very little...or to me this is like hiring a driver by taking them out to a parking lot and doing doughnuts. If you can fathom the idea that they can drive a car (at all) it seems like it is much more enlightening to hear about how they organize a schedule, clients they have picked up, problems they have solved...how they react and comment to situations you pose to them,etc. I guess the key here is to do this conversationally, and not like you're grilling them. Or you have to be a good question asker and a good listener..but if you are, or can become one, I 100% believe you can get the information you need in a humane and efficient manner. But even as I type this, I'm wondering if the ability to read people is why this so hard for software interviewers...or maybe it's for lack of that simple skill that our industry has resorted to silly proxies like fizz buzz, etc.
Well...fuck that guy. There is really no better measure, assuming you have the basic social skills to see through a con job/scam. I mean yah, you could always be tricked into calling someone's buddy or something, but with any depth or tactful questions that is rarely going to fool anyone.
>What bothers me is: you're basically the same coder both before and after competitive coding practice. You're only more marketable with the same skills.
Yup. You keep keep measuring that thing..I don't think you're measuring what you think you're measuring.
Right? I wouldn't feel comfortable working with colleagues who couldn't instantly come up with a novel sorting algorithm to some bizarre scenario I thought of to stump people. So maybe I should "counter" each coding question with my own. It'd be like a shootout. This isn't a dysfunctional culture, right?
>People need to understand they can do what they want, how they want, and on their terms
Not to be nit picker...but while encouraging to hear, that sentence seems a wee bit exaggerated. I think the main takeaway from your post--which I 100% agree with--is that social approval being the motivator in your life is a recipe for disappointment.
Seconded...I swear to God "that's a symptom of bad design" and its ilk are the most hackneyed type of response to a situation that has the bonus of making you seem "above it all". It absolves you of even having to bother to look into the situation to see if maybe there is nuance that you can't just throw platitudes at.
Parentheses are no issue at all...dead serious there. Use something like parinfer (easy for beginners!) or paredit, and that problem goes away right now. You won't even see the parentheses--trust me. I agree that not having other special symbols to break up the code and make easier to pick apart is kind of crappy. Enter Clojure... it elegantly supports other symbols in a non-eccentric (looking at you, Haskell) sort of way, which I find helps a lot. [] vector, {} map, #{} set...you get the idea.
>I'm very uncomfortable with you attributing such things to a culturally determined approach to parenting instead of looking at individual factors.
You should thank God you aren't American...it seems everyone else thinks they know exactly what makes us tick, and (as in this thread?) aren't shy at all about making sweeping generalizations about us.
Wow...pages that do less crap. We've really come a long ways from our webcrawler, Netscape roots...such progress. And to be clear, not pointing fingers, I'm honestly just astounded that a glorified, fundamentally unchanged monkey patched version of what we started with is where we are at...
I hear you on almost everything...I love tinkering, hacking, reading, pondering, side "experiments" (I think "project" is a bit grandiose for what I hack on from time to time)...but holy hell do I hate conferences and things like that. I just don't get it...most every conference I've seen could have been summed up in a quick article or powerpoint...and I don't get any personal thrills from the "live experience". That, and this is mine own super biased experience, every developer I met who was a conference nut was that guy who was obsessed with the "new shiny", who never seems to do any work that isn't greenfield and leaves others to deal with the fallout of various short-lived infatuations...yah, I'm not bitter, heh...but I'll be damned if these guys don't love their conferences;)
Maybe things have changed, but not a couple years ago when I was working with Haskell. No IDE story at all, which is just a crying shame when you think about the kind of refactoring and powerful features you could support. The fact that vim or other text editors were typically what was used was just odd and a waste IMO...like having a rocket propulsion system strapped to a Huffy.
An e-commerce site, glossy UIs, friend connector, and a searching utility...honestly our tech "giants" are just the the last guys standing from the Internet boom of the nineties
Yep, we don't want to talk about this...and maybe it's unfair this particular example is getting focused on...but yes, it does have many of the hallmarks of the software industry's dirty little secret: we like shiny new stuff, and we've gotten really good at convincing ourselves and others that novelty is not holding an undue influence in our decisions.